


Sing

by Crewe



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, idk how to tag this okay but its about bard magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 17:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8455804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crewe/pseuds/Crewe
Summary: There's a twenty foot goat monster getting ready to gore him, and Scanlan is just about done with things going wrong.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I watched that video of Scanlan staring down Yenk and going "I sing at it" and holy god I love that moment and this wasn't intended to turn into a spiel about my headcanons for how bard magic works but that's just kind of what happened.

It has been a _long_ fucking week.

For a moment, as a twenty-foot-tall horned and hooved abomination from the realm of _fuck you_ bears down on him, that’s about all Scanlan can think about.

He was scammed into buying all that _fucking_ spice for more gold than the party was ever allowed to know about (and then lost more money gambling, just to add insult to injury).

They’d discovered that hey, surprise, Percy’s psycho stalker had beaten them to the punch and run off with a Vestige while they weren’t looking, and _oh yeah_ was already on the way to getting another one.

(They’d gotten an airship, which was admittedly pretty fucking cool, and went a ways to making up for the overall shittiness of the rest of the week, except they didn’t get to _keep_ it—so close, yet so far.)

They’d almost gotten exploded before Ripley, Vax’s ex-protégé (who was taking the emo cues a little too strong), and that goddamned shadow demon that Scanlan had _specifically_ thought he had gotten rid of with that smooth acid trick had kicked their collective asses, and, _oh yeah_ , killed Percy.

(It’s still raw. He doesn’t like to think about it.)

And then, of course, they’d discovered that Seeker Assum, who was supposed to be a bro, was actually a member of the fucking Conclave just hanging around Whitestone.

Oh, and his head is still sore from Kima’s mace.

(His ego is sorer.)

So when he takes a step back towards the door of the Mansion and accidentally shatters a small patch of ice, when Yenk’s head swings around and those blazing red eyes fix on Scanlan and the monster he just summoned turns to come after him, well.

Scanlan has had _enough_.

He can feel the eyes of the party boring into his back. He knows they want him to run, and for a  moment, so does he. For just a moment, as he looks up (and up, and _up_ ) at the goristro, he itches to turn tail and sprint for the Mansion, pray to Sarenrae he’s fast enough to get there before it gores him.

Play it safe.

There’s been enough death recently.

Scanlan locks eyes with Yenk.

 _Fuck_ that.

They need this monster to stay where he is. They need him to fight the dragon. Their entire plan hinges on it—they didn’t come prepared to fight Vorugal at his prime, in his element. They’ve fought and lost and sacrificed too much to let the plan fall apart because the devil’s barista decided it preferred the taste of gnomes.

No. He won’t stand for it.

He is Scanlan _motherfucking_ Shorthalt. He has slain kings and dragons and demons. He has pulled miracles out of his perfectly-sculpted ass and danced away to sing songs about it. He has kept his friends alive—and failed to do so. He is the Kingslayer, the Mythcarver, the leader of Vox Machina—and he is not going to back down.

Scanlan’s face spreads into a grin and he stands tall and throws his arms outwards. He has spent his life making three feet bigger than six through sheer force of charisma—you’d better believe he can make it bigger than twenty. Scanlan has lived a long life, longer than any of his friends, and he did it by always being better—smarter, quicker, a faster talker and better performer, because the world is too big for one little gnome to take on unless they can look it in the face and dare it to try, just _try_ and cut me down—

One twenty-foot goat is nothing compared to a lifetime of thugs and guards and drunkards who don’t take too kindly to the attitude of someone a third their size who acts twice it. A little taller, maybe.

Scanlan is willing to bet a little dumber, too.

He draws his hand cone with a flourish, relishing in the familiar feel of smooth wood and magic under his fingertips. With one hand he brings the cone to his mouth. With the other he begins to cast.

It’s funny, really, how the process of casting a spell is seen to most (he thinks of Vax’s awestruck face at some new feat, of Percy’s indignation at something he can’t create for himself) as obtuse and mysterious—arcane, if you will. Casting a spell is the most natural thing in the world.

Music moves through Scanlan every moment of every hour of every day of every year—ceaseless, the reassuring weight of the entire universe threading through every breath he breathes, every sound, every touch and taste and scent, the relentless rhythm of everything surrounding and pervading him. He _knows_ , because it is part of him, how to affect it—how _these_ notes at _this_ time, in conjunction with _those_ words, and _that_ thought, and a particular disturbance of the current with his fingertips, like a conductor with the only band in the universe that really matters—he can see, he can feel, how it can change things.

He can conjure wonders. He can change his form, and those of others—he can alter perceptions, change how people see, and hear, and even think and remember—

He can bend others to his will.

With a wicked gleam in his eye, Scanlan smirks at Yenk and conducts the orchestra of everything.

He’s watched Keyleth cast her spells, and it’s always odd, to Scanlan, how she does it the same way every time. Her with her spell book, with her patterns and words written down precisely and memorized, and done over and over like a soldier practicing forms with a sword, like Vex pulling back a bowstring or Grog swinging an axe.

That’s not how he works.

Scanlan doesn’t know how a wizard might cast the spell he’s trying to, though he has learned what one might call it—impossible to have a conversation about magic if one is saying _Dimension Door_ and the other is saying _I know the secret password that tells the universe to open up and let me go over there_.

He doesn’t know these spells like a wizard, they aren’t written into a spellbook—they are written into his very being.

_It’s a gift I have to share with the world!_

He told Vax that, once, and that’s how it feels when the music fills him, presses against his reluctantly closed lips like it would rather he burst than stay silent—he has been blessed by it, as surely as Sarenrae has blessed Pike with her light, and it feels _wrong_ on a fundamental, cosmic level not to let it out

So Scanlan starts the spell as he always does, by opening himself to the music he knows is there, is always there, humming along in synch with all of life and death, that he knows is winding through the inside of the goristro’s mind even as it does his, even if the monster isn’t aware of it, and as Scanlan feels the eddies of music curving around his fingers and lining themselves up with his intentions, he feels the words come to him.

And he sings.

He sings in time to Yenk’s footsteps in the snow, to the fires in its eyes and the rage in its soul, and he can feel the change in the music even as he sees the fiend stop and stand at attention, sees the flames in its eyes bank as it waits for instruction.

He knows how he would say the spell he just cast: _I see you, Yenk, and I know you for what you are, fire and fight and fury. See me, Scanlan Shorthalt, father and brother and friend, and know that I am greater than you, and you will submit._

He knows how a wizard would say the spell he just cast: _Dominate Monster_.

His words echo off the shining cliffs as he calls out his commands to the goristro, and he can feel their resonance in the air around him. He can feel how they ripple through the monster’s mind, and he knows that, for now, Yenk will do as he says. The spell will hold as long as his will is stronger than the goristro’s.

Scanlan is confident that it will hold quite a while.

As he retreats back towards his party members to wait for Vorugal’s appearance, he feels lighter, buoyed up against the weight of the world by the pulse of the music, warmed against the frozen wind by the knowledge that finally, _something_ this week has gone right.


End file.
